Burnham plans summer tour of UK to win over voters in Labour ‘danger zones’

Exclusive: Prospective PM wants to give the country a hopeful message, in contrast with Starmer’s early missteps

Andy Burnham will undertake a summer tour as prime minister to Labour “danger zones” across the country where the party has been losing support, particularly areas hit by controversial government policies.

Burnham is planning the tour for the second half of the summer recess, with the aim of resetting Labour’s relationship with some of the UK’s most sceptical voters.

Insiders said the tone would be upbeat and hopeful, intended to be the opposite of Keir Starmer’s early days in office which focused heavily on failures left behind by the Conservatives. Burnham would emphasise it was Labour and the government that needed to change, rather than blaming other parties or external forces.

“His pitch will be about resetting the relationship with the voters, a more hopeful message that people seem to be receptive to. There are really difficult conversations to be had with people and communities across the country and he’ll go out and have those,” one source said.

Among the places he is expected to visit is Aberdeen, where Labour’s North Sea oil and gas policy has been deeply unpopular, as well as Port Talbot in Wales, the steelmaking town whose final blast furnace was shut down in September 2024. Labour went on to save steelmaking jobs in Scunthorpe, through nationalising British Steel.

Burnham is also expected to visit more Reform-facing parts of the UK, described by allies as places “left behind” by Westminster and where people have felt little real change from the Labour government’s policies so far.

These will include deprived and remote parts of the south of England – many of which are now represented by Labour MPs – other towns where industry and high streets have been affected by the turbulent economy, and rural constituencies where farmers have been angered by Labour’s tax policies.

Burnham’s strategists will aim to start his premiership in the opposite tenor to Starmer’s first few months. Starmer used an early speech to emphasise how the next few years would be “painful” and that he did not expect living standards to increase quickly.

The summer months in 2024 were dominated by the fallout from the unexpected decision by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to cut the winter fuel allowance, and the donations scandal where clothing for Starmer and other cabinet ministers was revealed to have been funded by the donor Waheed Alli.

But strategists believe another big mistake was Starmer and Reeves’s decision to attack the Conservatives for the “£22bn black hole” in their economic plans when voters were tired of hearing politicians blame one another.

“Andy intends to completely change this,” one source said. “You will not hear him blaming any other parties and you can see that from his rhetoric already. He will say it is Labour that will be the change.”

Burnham, who has long talked extensively about the divide between the north and south of England, has been urged by MPs and other mayors to spend more time in parts of the south of England and London as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all now run by nationalist parties.

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MPs in London are said to be particularly nervous about Burnham’s rhetoric and what it may mean for the capital. As mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham routinely highlighted the inequality between levels of investment in London’s transport and infrastructure and those in the north of England. Burnham intends to spend most of August away from London.

His emphatic victory over Reform in Makerfield – which also united progressive voters as a bloc to vote against Nigel Farage’s party – is a key reason for his appeal to MPs. However, MPs in London are facing a significant threat from Green and independent challengers and have been appealing to Burnham in face-to-face meetings about the need to show that he understands the separate challenge they are facing.

Key allies of Burnham have said he will need to “dominate the summer” much like Farage did last August when Reform organised press conferences and stunts while the government did little.

One senior MP – expected to be in Burnham’s cabinet – said it was a key part of the reasoning not to take part in the Clacton byelection, which Farage will fight in early August, in order to take the oxygen away from Reform.

“We need to get out to the country, all guns blazing, real positivity and lots of big announcements focused on hope. I would be very worried if we got distracted by a Clacton sideshow,” one source said. “A new prime minister needs to be the main story the country is hearing about, not Nigel Farage.”